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According to a Eurostat survey, Malta had the highest rate of applicants for asylum per capita in 2008.

Last year, there were nearly 240 000 asylum applicants registered in the EU27, or 480 applicants per million inhabitants. The main countries of citizenship of these applicants were Iraq (29,000 or 12% of the total number of applicants), Russia (21,100 or 9%), Somalia (14,300 or 6%), Serbia (13,600 or 6%) and Afghanistan (12,600 or 5%).

In 2008, among the Member States for which data are available, the highest number of applicants were registered in France (41,800 applicants). The United Kingdom recorded 30,500 applicants. However, this figure covers only new applicants. Germany (26,900), Sweden (24,900), Greece (19,900), Belgium (15,900) and the Netherlands (15,300) followed.

When compared with the population of each Member State, the highest rates of applicants registered were recorded in Malta (6,350 applicants per million inhabitants), Cyprus (4,370), Sweden (2,710), Greece (1,775), Austria (1,530) and Belgium (1,495).

In some Member States, a large proportion of the applicants came from a single country. The Member States with the highest concentrations were Poland (91% of the applicants came from Russia), Lithuania (77% from Russia), Hungary (52% from Serbia), Luxembourg (48% from Serbia) and Bulgaria (47% from Iraq).